Science fiction has long encompassed every aspect of human experience — including sex. For as long as we've dreamed of going to space, we've dreamed of getting it on there. And porn has embraced science fiction as well — from 1968's softcore masterpiece Barbarella to the 1990s cyberpunk boom to the recent craze for porn spoofs, there has always been science fiction porn. After all, porn is an escapist genre when you get right down to it. And the line between a science fiction "B" movie and a softcore porn film is often more seethru than Jane Fonda's breast bubbles.

Here are the greatest science fiction porn films of all time, from 1961 to 1991. It's NSFW! Note: There are a number of exploitation films on this list, but no horror, since that's a very different category. Likewise, no fantasy. Also, if we missed your favorite, please chime in in the comments! With such a huge and sweeping topic, I'm sure we missed some stuff. We'll be covering 1992 to the present very soon.

Advertisement

Nude on the Moon (1961)

"Nudist colony" films were a staple of early softcore film-making, and Doris Wishman was one of the masters of the genre. But it was a particular stroke of genius to create a nudist film set on the Moon, eight years before humans actually landed there. Why is the Moon full of naked ladies? With antennae on their heads? It's never entirely clear, but apparently there's a breathable atmosphere thanks to all those trees.

Barbarella (1968)

The original softcore science fiction porn film, which would probably be R-rated today. Jane Fonda's blonde mega-mane and anime eyes radiate sexuality. It starts with a zero-G spacesuit strip show in Fonda's shag-carpeted space capsule, and then she fights off angry dolls in her ripped stockings. Plus she hooks up with a hunky space angel. Best bit: Durand Durand puts Barbarella into his sexomatic Excessive Machine, only to have her burn it out with her over-the-top tantric energy.

Space Thing (1968)

And then there's this all-out sexploitation film, in which a man reading a science fiction magazine in bed with his wife falls asleep... and dreams that he's on a lesbian spaceship, where the sadistic Captain Mother forbids the female crewmembers to get it on with men. At left is our absolute favorite scene, where the main character Granilla disintegrates another man who's jealous that the women are sleeping with Granilla — and then a naked woman shows up to explain disintegration. Another nearly naked woman helpfully shows up and adds, "He had it coming." See more clips from Space Thing here.

Captain Mother knows how to keep order on her ship: with a silvery glitter-covered flogger and a…
Read more Read more

Flesh Gordon (1974)

A crazy pastiche of the 1930s Flash Gordon serials, featuring Flesh and his sidekick Dale Ardor. The Emperor Wang bombards the Earth with a sex ray from planet Porno and it turns everybody into a sex fiend. This is somehow a problem. Lesbian queens in black swan spaceships, bearded men with pasties, penisaurs, bearded men with drag queen makeup, sex robots... The whole thing is intensely campy, even by 70s porn standards, and feels like Rocky Horror with more nudity and less singing. And yet it features special effects by people who went on to work on the Star Trek and Star Wars movies. At one point, a giant claymation monster, voiced by Craig T. Nelson from Coach, grabs Dale and carries her up a wall like King Kong. Flash has to battle the lumpy creature to save his hot sidekick.

The Girl From Starship Venus (1975)

Also known as Sexplorer. Basically your classic "alien girl comes to Earth and has to learn about human sexuality" movie. The theme tune (at left) really has to be heard to be believed. "In an atomic burst of energy, she appeared in female form/She investigated lovin' far beyond the human norm/With a bang or two, she started being sexy all around." Yep, that pretty much says it all. Please watch that video, it's amazing. And then click here for her encounter with a man who has a balloon fetish. "My funny ways, you know. We all have them." Indeed.

Spermula (1976)

We wrote about Spermula extensively here. It's your classic "alien women come to Earth to drain men of their sexual fluids" movie — and I believe the process leaves the men impotent afterwards. But one of the aliens is accidentally turned into Udo Kier instead of a beautiful woman, which is really unfortunate. The aliens drive around in a Rolls Royce picking up men, and there's also a subplot with a circus troupe for some reason. Anyway, here are some clips.

The mist creatures of the planet Spermula transform themselves into beautiful women, so they can…
Read more Read more

Roller Babies (1976)

Carter Stevens brings you this futuristic story featuring lots of molded plastic furniture — see clips at left. It's the future and sex is illegal, but there's pornography on television constantly. And apparently this movie includes a scene of "telepathic fellatio," which sounds unusual. And someone decides that sex on roller skates is what's needed to save this doomed society. Mostly, though, there is sexy, sexy plastic furniture.

2069: A Sexy Odyssey (1977)

Another movie about alien women who come to Earth because their entire planet is powered by... wait for it... human sperm. For some reason, they land in Bavaria. Or Sweden. Anyway, everybody thinks the alien women in their jumpsuits are members of the women's ski team, leading to some hilarious misunderstandings. SFW clip at left.

Sex World (1978)

And here's a porno version of Westworld. People travel to a futuristic resort where they can act out their most ridiculous fantasies with lifelike robots. No Yul Brynner though. Apparently this film is really really good, and might actually be better than Futureworld. Everybody gets paired off with robots that challenge their worldviews, including a lesbian with a male robot and a bigot with an African American robot. Because it was the 1970s, the era of Archie Bunker. At left: the amazing disco theme song, plus another clip and the poster.

Star Virgin (1979)

It's really hard to explain this post-Star Wars porn adventure, but we'll try. In a nutshell, all the humans are dead — except for one blonde in a very Barbarella-influenced space outfit, who was created in a test tube and lives in a space capsule with a robot named Mentor. And the blonde (who has the most distractingly squeaky voice you'll ever hear) begs Mentor to teach her about sex. Which Mentor finally does — by showing her a series of porn films in which vampires wearing Richard Nixon masks get it on. At last, Mentor uses a robotic dildo to make the Star Virgin happy, and shoots white robotic lubricant all over her. Yes, really. More details here.

The last human alive, grown in a test tube, begs her robot guardian to teach her about sex, in this …
Read more Read more

Galaxina (1980)

An R-rated space comedy that's a very thinly veiled Star Wars parody, starring then-Playboy Playmate of the Year Dorothy Stratten before her husband murdered her. As Star Wars spoofs go, this is one of the least amusing, with the obligatory "visiting an alien brothel" scene replacing the Cantina scene and a lot of unfunny silliness. Here's the first 20 minutes.

Randy the Electric Lady (1980)

This porn movie starring Desiree Cousteau was apparently made by a bunch of art students, with a script by Terry Southern — the novelist who also wrote Dr. Strangelove. And indeed, there's a weird sort of Strangelove shout-out in this film. Instead of "You can't fight in here, this is the War Room!" somebody is told, "There's no fucking in the Sex Institute!". The sex institute tries to cure Randy of her inability to have an orgasm by hypnotizing her and connecting her to a computer — leading to a scene where punch cards fly across the room with pleasure. Randy turns out to be the source of a chemical called orgasmine that causes anybody who ingests it to become super-horny. And you can probably see where this is going.

The Beast in Space (1980)

A quasi-sequel or retelling of the sexploitation classic The Beast... only in space! And there are lots of light saber fights and laser battles, because Star Wars. As we explained back in 2008, "The Beast In Space has the laser gun fights and fake light sabre fights with guys in silver jumpsuits, the Han Solo-knockoff, and a robot that rules the planet Longion by keeping everybody in a mind-controlled haze of non-stop sex, in which they never age."

The Satisfiers of Alpha Blue (1980)

This one takes place in a future where everybody lives for pleasure — but one man isn't happy and wants to find true love as well. From the director of Deep Throat and The Devil in Miss Jones, this is sort of a riff on the Logan's Run/Brave New World sort of dystopia, where you can get sex at the push of a button, but people feel spiritually unfulfilled.

Ultra Flesh (1980)

An alien comes to Earth — yes, again — and this time, she's on a mission to cure men of impotence that was caused by evil aliens in the 1990s. The good news? The benevolent alien visitor, known as Ultra Flesh, is played by legendary porn star Seka. Seka calls together the U.S. President and the Russian and Chinese leaders, for an international orgy in which she turns them into "fleshette lovers." Or something. But it turns out that the tiny man who's been pleasuring the President's wife under the table is actually one of the evil aliens. Eventually, Seka has some kind of sex duel with Jamie Gillis, who's an alien with an ice penis. It's a bit confusing.

Programmed For Pleasure aka La femme-objet (1981)

A French movie about a science fiction writer who's searching for the ultimate sexual dynamo. He hooks up with a couple of flesh-and-blood women, including his wife, before deciding to build his own perfect woman, a blonde "sex machine" named Kim, who's up for any perversion he can dream up. It's all fun and games, until she cheats on him with the mailman.

The Perils of Gwendoline in the Land of the Yik-Yak (1984)

The maker of Emmanuelle, Just Jaeckin, finally went all the way off the rails with this one. It's actually hard to summarize — but basically it's a Raiders of the Lost Ark riff which turns into an exploration of an underground city ruled by women. Full of strange steampunk machines and lots and lots of gratuitous nudity and G-strings. Some of the steampunk machines have naked women popping in and out of them for no reason. Watch another clip and learn more here.

If you've never seen The Perils of Gwendoline In The Land Of The Yik Yak, then allow me to…
Read more Read more

Sex Wars (1985)

Why did it take eight years for a straight-up porno spoof of Star Wars to appear? There were plenty before this, of course, but this was the most blatant. As one IMDB reviewer notes, this film is at least better than George Lucas' prequels. In any case, Princess Layme (ha ha, you're killing me) seeks help to rescue her sister, Princess Orgasma (humor levels escalating) from Lord Balthazar, who's basically Darth Vader but they couldn't think of a riff on Darth Vader that was as witty as Princess Layme and Princess Orgasma. They did manage to name the R2D2 robot analogue 4Q.

Amber Aroused (1985)

When the robots rise up to kill us all, they'll probably cite this film as one of the inciting incidents. The poster pretty much tells the whole story. Amber is hired as a maid at the house of an inventor, who has just created a brand new robot named Woody. And you can pretty much guess what happens next, I'd imagine.

E Three - The Extra Testicle (1985)

Directed by none other than porn legend Ron Jeremy! So you know it's got to be something special. The tagline reads: "After a million years in space... he comes to Earth for a good time." And it appears that E.Three is actually a large bald man with his skin painted green, wearing an orange jumpsuit — he bears pretty much no resemblance to Spielberg's famous wrinkly-headed alien. Although if you want to watch actual E.T. porn and don't mind being scarred mentally forever, click here.

In the following (heavily edited, but still mind-blowing) clip, a female ET makes love to a cadre…
Read more Read more

Lust In Space (1985)

On the planet Zitcom (yes, really) sexuality is forbidden by the evil Queen Vixanna. But one alien woman flees to come to Earth, land of unbridled sexuality. Also, Ron Jeremy is a ruler of a different alien planet, where ordinary people are turned into porn stars by contact with special androids and dildos — and he sends his androids and dildos to Earth to turn the people of Earth into porn stars, too. It's a bit unclear, actually — I'm cobbling together a couple different synopses of this one. The poster is pretty hypnotic to look at, though. Oh, and the tagline is, "Contact is made." Which is probably a Carl Sagan in-joke.

Sex Busters (1986)

There's basically nothing I can tell you about this one that you can't glean from the box art at left. Yes, it's an X-rated spoof of Ghostbusters. And the tagline is "I ain't afraid of no ho!". And there is something about "sextoplasm." It's enough to make you not want to be the keymaster or the gatekeeper.

Time Adventure: Zeccho 5-byo Mae (1986)

A classic Japanese "pink film" about a woman who travels forward in time 15 years and has lots of strange sexual adventures in the year 2001. Here's one scene where she finds herself being wheeled along on a gurney, naked, on top of a total stranger. And he has a cute kitten! Also, at one point in the film, a man has an utterly adorable maneki neko tattoo covering his back. The whole thing looks sort of surreal and lush and beautiful. The actual time machine looks very DIY, too.

The Load Warriors (1987)

Yep. It's an X-rated version of Mad Max: The Road Warrior. Because we really needed that, for some reason. And it's set in a post-apocalyptic future where there's only one resource that everybody is desperate for more of... sperm. Particularly, untainted sperm. Peter North plays Moore, the last source of good sperm in this atomic hellhole. Missy (Gail Force) must fight the evil Humongous (Lois Ayres) for Moore's precious bodily fluids. Followed by Load Warrior II: The Second Coming.

Sex Trek: The Next Penetration (1990)

We could be here all day listing all of the Star Trek porn spoofs — and in fact, we wrote a complete history of Trek porn back in 2008, which is looking a bit unreadable at the moment unfortunately. But this was probably the first "proper" Trek porno spoof, featuring the TOS crew going to the planet Uranus to fight the Mugatu for the planet's resources. This film spawned a slew of sequels and rip-offs throughout the 1990s, and then there was a whole new batch of Trek porn films in recent years. Anyway, the clip at left gives a pretty good flavor of the brazen Shatner imitations and terrible porn hair.

The Star Trek trailer caused a stir when it showed Uhura taking her top off. But a legion of Trek…
Read more Read more

Sex and Zen (1991)

One of the most famous Hong Kong exploitation films of all time — which has spawned a few sequels and a 3-D remake — this film is actually an adaptation of the classic novel The Carnal Prayer Mat (Rou Pu Tuan) by Li Yu, a classic 17th century author and playwright. Just like in Li's novel, the main character of the film is a scholar who gets his penis surgically replaced — in the book, it's a dog penis, but in the movie it's a horse penis, leading to a disturbing and somewhat slapsticky surgery scene. One of the more demented erotic movies ever made.

Edward Penis Hands (1991)

And it seems only fitting to end with quite possibly the most famous porn spoof ever made — you could easily imagine someone deciding to make a porn spoof of Star Wars or Star Trek, and Ghostbusters and E.T. don't seem like too much of a stretch. But it's perhaps slightly more surprising that someone would decide that the world needed a spoof of Tim Burton's Edward Scissorhands. Here's a couple of clips from the film — including the opening scene, where a door-to-door dildo saleswoman meets Edward and becomes so taken with his natural dildo substitutes, she brings him home to meet her family. Including her daughter. I'm kind of curious to know if Tim Burton and Johnny Depp have ever seen this movie.

Stay tuned for the sequel, covering the past 20 years of completely inappropriate science fiction porn movies. A version of this article appeared in a vastly different form back in January 2008.